Hamilton leads McLaren 1-2 in Turkish Friday Practice 1

Lewis Hamilton was in front of Jenson Button for FP1 in Turkey today, as he was an entire second faster than any of his opposition. Also, Red Bull and Force India tested out their interpretations of the F-duct system.

Behind the McLaren 1-2, the Mercedes drivers of Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg were 3rd and 4th. Sebastian Vettel was 5th for Red Bull, and the two Renaults of Robert Kubica and Vitaly Petrov were 6th and 7th. Petrov was only 0.004 seconds slower than Kubica, a great performance for a rookie.

Mark Webber was 8th, and was 1.444 seconds slower than the leader. Fernando Alonso and Adrian Sutil topped off the top 10. Kamui Kobayashi was 11th, and Vitantonio Liuzzi was 12th, 0.4 seconds slower than team-mate Sutil. Felipe Massa was 13th, Sebastien Buemi was 14th, and Pedro de la Rosa was 15th. The two Williams cars of Hulkenberg and Barrichello were 16th and 17th, with Jaime Alguersuari slowest of the midfield.

As normal, Lotus were the best of the new teams, and again closed the gap considerably to the rest of the grid, with a new rear wing this weekend. Heikki Kovalainen led Jarno Trulli, while Karun Chandhok was behind them in 21st. Lucas di Grassi and Timo Glock were 22nd and 23rd. Instead of Bruno Senna, the HRT team elected to run Sakon Yamamoto, who was signed as the team’s reserve driver a few weeks ago. He was dissapointingly slow though, as he was 24th, and half a second behind Glock.

While Sebastian Vettel ran the F-duct on his car, Mark Webber stayed with the original version of the car. Adrian Sutil crashed his Force India with only 3 minutes to go in this session, as a driver error caused the car to understeer off at Turn 8 and slam into the barriers, removing the front wing, nosecone and both front wheels in the process.

Karun Chandhok also suffered problems, as his HRT car had an electrical problem, and was forced to crawl back to the pits. He was able to rejoin with 15 minutes left in the session though.